Raise the Hammer
By Ryan McGreal
Published July 28, 2010
The City of Hamilton recently launched a new website on Hamilton's Role in the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games, including a web poll asking respondents to select a preference for either the West Harbour or the East Mountain as the stadium location.
Between yesterday evening and this morning, the ratio of support jumped from approximately 80% support for West Harbour and 20% support for the East Mountain to approximately 60% support for West Harbour and 40% support for East Mountain.
What's really interesting, however, is that the posted comments remain almost exclusively in favour of the West Harbour. It appears that a large number of East Mountain supporters all voted around the same time, yet none of them bothered to leave a comment. Very strange.
By Pxtl (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:17:34
By nobrainer (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:20:19
By hamiltonthisis (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:22:11
The poll on the site is not locked down by IP address, as deleting the cookie for http://panamhamilton2015.ca/ allows one to vote again.
Shenanigans abound.
By highwater (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:31:58
I just think it shows that EM supporters don't have any strong, convincing arguments to make and don't care as passionately about the future of our city as WH supporters do. Also no doubt they were sent there by the ticats fan page so I imagine alot of them don't even live here.
By So you want to play games (anonymous)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:44:43
Off-topic, but I noticed that if you search for "stadium" on Google, the Ticats have an ad running.
I checked into the bid competition and if you click that ad, it costs the Ticats at least $1.25.
Yes, that's right - if you just:
1) Searching for "stadium" in Google
2) Click on the ad that says "Truth about the stadium"
You've just cost Bob Young $1.20 or more! They must be dropping serious cash on this campaign.
By Undustrial (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:50:18
Curiouser and curiouser.
Somebody really wants an East Mountain site. A lot. This happened fairly recently - otherwise they would have played the Ti-Cat card earlier and would have attempted to rig the Future Fund a little better. Whether it's a play for the election, interest in the west harbour lands (something Torontoesque perhaps?), or simply more planned East-Mountain subdivisions. Whatever it is, there's something we're not hearing yet.
I've seen this kind of thing often enough - there's always some sort of clever backroom deal. Like the way the Spectator ran a big article the day AFTER DiIanni was elected about the planned billion-dollar suburb DeSantis was planning to put on the East Mountain. One of the headlines was "Expressway was the lynchpin". Funny how there was little of such coverage before the election, even though we continually pointed it out. Saw it on the West Coast, too, with Olympic-related highway developments which just happened to open up acres of forested mountain owned by a local development company who planned to build $1-3 million mansions there. And though the local Liberal MLA had won her seat based on opposition to cutting the highway through the mountain, she quickly flip-flopped when she got into office. Her husband, it turned out, was one of the local heads of that same development company.
Development is a shady game. Look at Detriot and all the millions which have been made by burning down homes.
By frank (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 14:52:32
By reuben (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 15:03:22
By DBC (anonymous)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 15:15:43
By reuben (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 15:26:58
By jason (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 15:56:46
By George (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 16:16:03
By Tybalt (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 17:18:38
By Pollster (anonymous)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 17:21:08
By Undustrial (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 19:25:08
There's a difference between forty fans of the West Harbour plan going and voting on an online poll and one fan of the East Mountain location going to vote 40 times in quick succession. That's not hypocrisy. Every democratic vote depends, to some degree, on the simple logistics of which side is better at mobilizing their supporters when it counts. It's undemocratic when something other than actual votes are being counted.
By Robert D (anonymous)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 20:12:02
By z jones (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 20:16:18
By jason (registered)
Posted July 28, 2010 at 20:49:48
EM supporters might as well vote 20 times for their choice. Meanwhile down at the WH, some real money is starting to flow from the private sector, along with possible top tier management:
By reuben (registered) - website
Posted July 28, 2010 at 22:27:24
By frank (registered)
Posted July 29, 2010 at 08:27:14
jason.... there's a newer article with some comments from Scott Mitchell that really open the eyes to the attitude the Cats are taking to this - disgusting. Anyone with the balls to say that Bob Young is concerned about the city needs their head taken out of the behinds.